


The Tests of Time

by susiephalange



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agent!Reader, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Canon Compliant, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Domestic, F/M, Female!Reader - Freeform, Fluff, Foreign Language, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, House Cleaning, Mutant Powers, POV Second Person, Polski | Polish, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Radio Communication, Slow Build, Storytelling, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, but only a few words, mutant!reader, so really it can be read by anyone, Русский | Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-23 09:44:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10716948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiephalange/pseuds/susiephalange
Summary: Maybe it was because you were the only one who had connected the dots - who had figured out that the angry angel and the flighty one-handed man were the same person.There are ordinary people, and then there is you - who had a childhood growing up with stories from both your grandmother and mother, of a man who had helped, and had needed help.





	1. A Man, A Snowdrift, and The Subsequent Stories

**Author's Note:**

> I had intended this to be a short one-shot, but we all know that I like to let the story get away from me and write itself, and well, this happened! It's all pre-written, but because my internet is spotty at the moment, I'll post it chapter-by-chapter. This should all be posted by the end of the week. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You grew up hearing stories of a man in Soviet clothing, and a man in military garb, both from different eras in history, both from different people in your family. It's you who connects the dots...

You were a second-generation immigrant, but that didn't stop those cruel words. Even if you were American, there was just something about you - perhaps it was the appearance, or that name of yours, or even what you brought to eat for lunch in your Tupperware - which made those nasty comments and grubby handed people treat you like you were a second-class citizen. Just because you spoke another language at home behind the closed doors of the apartment. Just because your blood came from the cold and the snow and had a deep history of being wrapped in things greater than itself.

There was a sort of story, a folk tale that your grandmother had told your mother, and a story that your mother had, and she'd told you both accounts as a child. It was fantastical, phantasmagorical for bloodlines to have a story that was passed on, and this one was no different.

There was the narrative of Grandmother Svetlana, who on the way to return from town selling coal in the colds of the Polish winter, had been lost in a snow drift too far from the house for a search party to have found her.

She would have died there, but her stories told of a man, with wild eyes, the only words she had shared were her thanks, and his curt Russian accent calling her a ' _zgubione kaczątko'. Lost duckling._ He had been walking by, wearing one of the military coats she had seen on Russian soldiers by the boarder, and had shed it to share once he had taken her from the snow.

That coat was the only reminder of that day - a remnant of a sort of fairy-tale. Grandmother Svetlana's story was of a man who had saved her life; she would always talk of him as if he was an angry angel, who had delivered her to her doorstep from the grasps of the old Gods, who had disappeared before her father had answered the door. The memory of the angry angelic man stayed with her, even when she began to lose her mind following the death of your dear Grandfather.

Your mother's story was different. She was not being protected by someone in her account, but rather, protecting.

She'd just uprooted her mother and father from living in Pennsylvania, to move to a little place in the East of Minnesota, in a more manageable property for her ageing parents, and, to find a place where she could raise the child she was carrying with a stable living. Not a soul knew of the father, of who he was and did and did to her, and she kept it that way. It was a long drive over, and wanting to take it in two days, Marcia _______ had stopped at a cheap motel overnight, had settled in her ageing parents to sleep, and took a little walk through a corn field.

Not in her greatest imagination had she thought to come across a wounded man. Eyes marked with bruises and black dust, they were staring deep into her soul, the shade of blood mottling his paling skin, a silver space-age hand, dark blood soaking the black clothes he wore.

Your mother said of him uttering in a mixture of Russian, French, Czech, Polish - and only because of your mother's heritage, she knew what he was speaking of, what he needed. Luckily again, your mother was a nurse, and before too long, he was cleaned up.

The man had noticed her abdomen protruding through her shirt, and had commented, his words rusty from years of disuse, "You are with a child. You help me, when I could hurt you ... why?"

As a kid, you'd always found that part fascinating. Perhaps it was because it was _you_ he was talking about, or maybe because your mother was such a trusting and compassionate woman and would defend those who could not defend themselves with her strength and every breath she had in her body.

Apparently, she'd just replied something along the lines of being a good person, and had given him a sandwich she'd had tucked in her jacket. She took him to the motel, and buying out another room, gave him a bed for the night. Her story ended there, as the next morning, the bed was bare, with no signs that a soul had been there except the military-like made bed, and a _do not disturb_ sign crushed by a firm grip.

It was those stories you grew up on - while the kids your age played with fashion toys and watched _Spongebob Square-Pants,_ you had a cloth doll who wore a thick jacket, and had a silver hand and a mask of black dust covering his eyes. Even though you were eight, your drawings would be full of the mysterious man who had graced both the matriarchs of your family's lives. Maybe it was because you were the only one who had connected the dots - who had figured out that the angry angel and the flighty one-handed man were the same person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short first chapter, sorry. The next one should be up soon enough!


	2. A Spy Agency, The Star-Spangled Man, and Life After Therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there's anything anyone knows, it's that life does in fact go on, and yours does - leading you to S. H. I. E. L. D. and path you'd never in your wildest dreams would have thought possible to happen to you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, posting one more chapter while I've got Wi-Fi today...

But that was all in the past. Therapists called it a phase, and some people thought it to be an obsession, or a really messed up idea of idealising something that happened years and years ago. Heck, even a fortune teller your grandmother knew thought you were odd, but perhaps it was because four years later you found yourself locked in a secure area for super powered people. You know, slightly-more-serious-than-personality-odd kind of odd. It was then your mother visited you in the S. H. I. E. L. D. facility, and confessed that your father had been a delinquent metal-manipulating mutant, and she had run off with you to keep you safe from him. 

It was the heartfelt heart-to-heart that swayed, S. H. I. E. L. D., and they decided to train you up, and take you on as a young apprentice, becoming a part of a response team for super-powered people like you. After all, you were the tough one - with an indestructible body that, from many simulations, had withstood the force of skyscrapers falling onto you.

And that, apparently, gave you the authority to lead. And leading - that was something you did very well.

It was a Sunday, and with not many stores open around the area, you found yourself and your response team in the quinjet, waiting around on the outskirts of Washington D. C., chilling near the Patuxent River. Your team was a mis-match of Coulson's on a good day, filled with the people who had nowhere to go, and nothing to do better than standing up for the little guys, and giving them a fresh start. A few people were mutants like you, a few ... not so much. Just last week you took in three teens from an accident and give them a place to live and not go mad with their new abilities. Work perks.

But now, you were just sitting. Lounging. Waiting. But it was then your radio was patched into - only S. H. I. E. L. D. personnel knew the code - and you were, to your surprise, on the receiving end of the iconic voice of Steve Rogers,  _the_ Captain America.

"Agent, ______, come in, Agent ______, 4-10?" his all-American voice crackled over the static connection.

Instantly, you felt your limbs at odds, reaching as fast as you could for the radio. "10-4, Agent _______ speaking. Is this Captain Rogers?" You ask, and before he can respond, you add, "We're at radio silence, nobody is coming in on our outward calls. What is going on?"

You hear a dark laugh at his end, but instead of his voice replying, you hear another legendary superstar of the workplace, Natasha Romanov. "Agent ______, an enemy named HYDRA has infiltrated S. H. I. E. L. D. 10-33, the Winter Soldier has risen from the dead, and is currently attacking the base in Washington D. C. Roger."

Without hesitation, you speak up, "10-200, Rogers, Romanov?" you ask, and clicking the connection off, you call your team together, and make organisations to drop the camouflage, raise the shields and make way to the location that was only a quick ride into the city.

"S. H. I. E. L. D. HQ, Agent _______." Romanov replied. "We're counting on your unit. Make contact on arrival. 4-10?"

You nod, radioing back in. "10-4. Over and out, Captain Rogers, Agent Romanov."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! If you don't know any of the radio talk terms used in this chapter, here's a handy-dandy guide! ([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CB_slang#Other_popular_terms))
> 
> 4-10 -- said when asking if transmission was received, or agreed with.   
> 10-4 -- said when acknowledging the transmission that was received.   
> 10-33 -- an emergency situation  
> 10-200 -- police or reinforcement needed at a certain location


	3. A Heart-To-Heart During Battle, Forgotten Memories and A Lot of Yelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following orders given from _the_ Black Widow and Captain America, you follow the Winter Soldier, and try to reason with him. Mostly in English.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't update sooner, but I'll try to do so more regularly.

The ride in was quick, but what was even faster was the melee before you. The Helecarriers you were supposed to be assigned to almost a week ago were falling from the sky, or in the process of it. You could see where one was coming down, falling into the water before the headquarters. But if your eyes were wrong - and they were rarely wrong - you were watching a man in all black dragging the good captain Rogers from the depths of the lake.

"Report to Agent Romanov immediately," you delegate, turning to your team. "It's a long shot, me trusting you, because even if you are sleeping HYDRA agents, we've had a good run. Don't go shooting each other." You give them a sly smirk, "Don't want to blow this shit-show higher than it is already."

At that, you left your team to their devices, tracking the footsteps of where the Winter Soldier himself stood. You had a relatively normal childhood beside the obsession with the guy from your mother's and grandmother's stories, and tracking full grown men in the woods was not a big hobby of yours. But, it seemed fruitful - as in the clearing, stood HYDRA's weapon of mass destruction, the man himself.

But it's then it hits you, and you realise.

The man with a silver space age hand who wore all black and covered his face in black dust, he was no myth. Your family had met him. Just like Natasha Romanov had told you of the Winter Soldier, the guy who had shot through her body on a mission years back. Because both people were real, and they were the man standing before you.

"Отойди!" He growled.  _Back off._

Putting two hands up, you cursed yourself for wearing the standard outfit for S. H. I. E. L. D. agents, surrendering to the man who was reaching for a weapon that he didn't have at his waist. Like your mother, and her mother, you had never left your roots, and dabbled in bits and pieces of Slavic languages, and knew what he was getting across.

"Я здесь не для того, чтобы причинить тебе боль," you cry out, your hands raised high and your boots being quaked in.  _I'm not here to hurt you._  Even though you can't get injured, thanks to your mutant gene, any blow he lands on you will probably hurt like hell, and you're sure that you're scared. Heart racing as he walks toward you, you panic. "You know me - Ты знаешь меня!"

He stops still.

"I was not born, and you met a woman who looked a little like me, oh my god, you probably don't remember - uh, years and years ago. She cleaned your wounds and gave you a bed to rest, ah...Я не родился, а ты -,"

"-the Nurse," he whispered. His eyes were sad, and lost. "She gave me a Бутерброд. My mind is full of sludge, I can't remember much, but - the lost duckling, who looked like you as well ... and the man on the bridge, I knew him too, and he knew me..." He breathes. "Why can't I remember?"

Slowly, you lower your hands. "You mean Captain America, uh, Steve Rogers?" you ask him. "I know people who can help, we can help you remember. I work with Steve Rogers," it wasn't technically a lie, since you were both linked through the S. H. I. E. L. D. workplace. "My name is ________," you reach a hand to him, but the spell is broken.

"Нет!"  _No!_ He cries, taking a step back. "Не трогайте меня, я раняю все, что я касаюсь!"  _Do not touch me, I hurt everything that I touch!_

You can't help but laugh at that, albeit lightly not to spook the Winter Soldier. "Nothing can hurt me, Енот." You grin.  _Raccoon._ "You have a name, that you know? Or am I just going to call you  _pi_ _ę_ _kny chłopak_?"  _Beautiful boy._

He shakes his head. "The man on the bridge ... he called me Bucky." He sighed, wiping a hand over his face _._ "Дерьмо."  _shit._ "How do I know I can really trust you, though, little _________?" He asks.

You were a second-generation immigrant, and even if you were American, there was just something about you - which made people often ask you that question. Perhaps it was the appearance, or that name of yours, or even what you brought to eat for lunch. You take a step toward Bucky, reaching a hand out to his once more.

"My mother raised me on stories of you, nice stories where you did no harm to my blood relatives, Баки - Bucky, you can trust me because I am not the men who did this to you. I'm American born. I'm from a line of survivors, Bucky." Your hand touches his, and feeling the cool skin on his hand, you wrap your fingers around his palm, between his fingers. "I want to see if I can rub my luck off on you. Позволь мне спасти тебя." You plead.

_Let me save you._

He nods, slowly, eyes grazing behind you to see if anyone had followed you. But there was not a soul there, and you did not expect him to agree.

"Do you have a safe house?" He asks, those eyes of his fluttering around like fireflies in mid night. And just because your blood came from the cold and the snow and had a deep history of being wrapped in things greater than itself, you nodded. "Take me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, you've read that I've put the translations to both the Russian and Polish after the speech when spoken in the fic. Now, I don't speak Polish, nor Russian (sadly. My grandparents came from Poland, but they died before I could meet them, let alone learn to be bilingual) and all translations are courtesy of Google Translate. If you do by chance know Russian, or Polish, please, please, _please_ tell me if I have made an error with the spelling, or syntax or grammar of the words I've used! I'd rather be told than have a simple error forever immortalised on this site.


	4. An Acute Crisis, Personal Issues and Lots and Lots of Tissues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You stay with Barnes, by his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, a little filler chapter from the end of _CA:TWS_ and _CA:CW_. Also, I am having SO much fun naming the chapter titles. I feel a little like Uncle Rick Riordan!

In the safe house you stayed with him, until he decided that he had enough of U.S.A., and together, you arranged with contacts you knew from working on the field for a place to live in Romania. It took time, like everything does, to get settled, to help him wind down from all the drugs and the training, but without it, he was cold turkey, sometimes better off with them at small dosages than without. Some nights, you would be by his side, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a rag after his nightmares, other nights, locking yourself in the closet to get away from the thrashing and crashing that followed the outbursts of the soldier with no general.

But you’d read up on him – after all, after you’d gone AWOL, S. H. I. E. L. D. did all it could to have you taken care of remotely. Your mission wasn’t like any other you’d been on, what, with extraction of mutants and people in the field, but something a little closer to home: you were his career. If you weren’t there making sure that James Buchannan “Bucky” Barnes was taking care of himself, HYDRA could come in and swoop him off to being a machine again.

Unluckily for you, you were doing something that was much closer to home than ever: falling in love. While Bucky took his time, slowly filling a backpack up with memories and fragments of moments in notebooks, you couldn’t help but fall deeper and deeper for the man who you watched heal before you for years after the Washington incident. You both looked nothing like you did back then – you’d let your hair grow out, and he had taken to facial stubble, and tying his hair back with your headbands.

But came the day when the safe house was invaded, by Captain America, no less, and all three of you were running for your lives because who would know, by being a good guy and not leasing yourself off to become a service to government agencies (from your experience, often swayed by the likes of HYDRA) you were then a bad guy, and were running off.

But somehow, you were split up, and you’d lost the Star-Spangled Man, and your Bucky. You were left with the choice of running back into the fire (literal machine-gun fire) to be with the super soldiers, or, to just keep running. You were halfway across the country by the time the Director of S. H. I. E. L. D. found you, and halfway out of your comfort zone when you heard that everyone who had sided with Steve Rogers had been locked up in a secure facility for their ‘crimes’. But after your medical check-up, and a debriefing, you were given the keys to one of the bunks aboard the Helecarrier.

For the next four hours until touchdown, you cried, not only thinking of how you’d screwed up what mission they’d assigned to you after you had latched onto James Buchanan Barnes, but how you’d left him just like that in Romania, and that this was it. Just like the generations before you who had a moment with him in which that was passed down to the next person, this was your story. That you fell for the guy, brought him out of that dark place in his head … but left him in the instant the fire was reigning.

Thank goodness that the bunks were sound-proofed.


	5. A Chance Meeting, Housecleaning, and A New Arm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events of the Sokovian Accords and the Civil War between the Avengers, that James "Bucky" Barnes went free - free to walk the earth like any other man. It so happens that he has clearance to where you're staying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just felt like posting two chapters today. Hope you like them! Ooh, also, follow this link right [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN1WwnEDWAM) to listen to the song that's mentioned in the chapter -- I highly recommend listening to it!

It’s three months later and you’re still without a new mission, just spending all your time in the S. H. I. E. L. D. facility that you started all this super-powered journey on. Every once in a while, an Avenger would pop on in, and say hello to the personnel in the area, do their job and such. If they saw you, they didn’t see Agent ______, like they would have before the incident, no, they just saw the mutant who had lived with  _the freaking Winter Soldier, man!_  for a year, or give you a sad sort of side-eye if you were in the same room. But you didn’t live with the Winter Soldier. You’d lived with Bucky.

The Winter Soldier was HYRDA’s creation. Bucky Barnes was not, and would never be.

Bucky, he liked to eat ice-cream, but didn’t like caramel. Plums were his favourite fruit, but if they weren’t in season, he’d be okay with grapes, or mango. He’d dream of 1942 too often, waking up to be disappointed to be stuck in a boarded up flat on a continent he wasn’t born on. He liked rock music, though, how you’d dance to it, and you’d get him from the table, and dancing along to The Clashor whatever was on the radio. He liked to shower with the door locked, and would often leave his towel out, and you’d have to trade it through the barely-open door to him. He liked to watch you as you read a foreign book in the moonlight, trying to understand another language, and how he’d end up teaching you bits and pieces of new words.

It was a Sunday when you were organising your room. You’d seemed to have gathered a collection of books, all replacements of the ones you’d left in the safe house in Romania, but they were all over the place, and so was the bed, and the closet – ugh, you didn’t even want to think about  _that_ mess. But with the door open, you were pumping the original recording of  _Should I Stay or Should I Go_ , and with your hair tied up, you delved into the housework.

But not a minute after the song began, there was a knock at your door.

“Daisy, if you’ve got a problem with The Clash, you know where you can shove it,” you shouted above the punk band’s guitar riff, but turning, you didn’t see Daisy Johnson, fellow agent, but the form of the guy who haunted your dreams, with his getting-too-long hair, and the eyes that  _knew your freaking soul_  and that silver prosthesis that you’d held when dancing with him back in Romania. “Bucky?”

A smile grew on his face. “________.”

Immediately, you turn to music off, and whatever was in your hands they were dropped, and rushing toward him, you wrapped your arms around his waist, holding him tight, inhaling the scent that was completely  _Bucky_. “Oh my gosh, I had no idea if you made it out, there were no reports on you … I – I was so worried about you!” you cry out, your head pressed against his chest. You weren’t sure if there were tears coming from your eyes, or if there was just a little precipitation, but you couldn’t help it. “Wait, your arm, it isn’t the same –,”

He nods, stepping back from your embrace. “I lost it in the fight with Stark, and then King T’Challa of Wakanda built another one for me. It’s not heavy, it – it almost feels like a real arm. Except, it’s silver,” he jokes. Your hand glides over the metal, seeing the way it’s plated, how it works.

“Remind me to send the King of Wakanda a thank you note,” you muse. You meet Bucky’s gaze, and hurriedly, you add, “I mean,” you drop your hand from touching his arm, “It’s nice. Looks good. How are you, Bucky?”

There’s a pause. Then, “It’s not the same without you.” His eyes follow the room behind you, taking in the half-cleaned mess of a sleeping area you’re calling home as of now. “Wait, is that – that’s the book we were reading before they framed me, right there,” he points to the shelf across from the bed where the book with the green cover is lying down. “Don’t tell me you gave up and bough the English edition.”

You shake your head. “Nope, it’s in Romanian.” You grin.

Bucky beams. “I’m between jobs, what, with the Avengers on suspension, and, ah, if you’re not too busy, maybe we can read it together sometime? I –,”

“I’m between missions,” you interrupt, almost incredulous from the parallels. “I’m free now, if you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH I LOVE SAPPY, FLUFFY STUFF, WHAT A SAP I AM!


	6. A Finale, Two Hands Held and Happiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale: what happens to you and Bucky after the discussion about your Romanian book collection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, that chapter summary sounded _waaaay_ better in my head.

It’s three years later, and you’ve been cleared for the Avengers Initiative, and so has Bucky, and you’re both living in the facility in upstate New York like two homeless people with superpowers beyond their wants and needs. You’re often tempted to finally make some sort of contact with your father, but after meeting the Maximoff twins, and realising who  _their_ father was, you just gave up. Erik Lehnsherr could just go to hell. You’re also often tempted to dig deeper into your history despite knowing your maternal side’s ongoing meetings with Bucky Barnes throughout the ages, but you don’t.

Somethings are left better buried.

In the Avengers facility, it’s quiet in the afternoons when nobody has anything on. There are birds, and the trees turn colours in the seasons and the chitter of chatter and friendly banter from the warriors who assemble to protect the world flows out through the open glass doors, the open plan living area something from the dreams of middle class citizens, or just those who are like Mr. Tony Stark, and built it all himself.

You’re sitting beside Bucky, a glass of orange juice in one hand, his in the other. The sun is warming your back, your head upon his shoulder, and surrounded by friends, this moment if almost a nirvana. You’ve been to hell and back with James Buchanan Barnes, sure, but the hell-scape of the cold and snow that your blood had been born from, and his turned into had ended. Sure, you were a second-generation immigrant, and he was a guy torn from his home to become something he was not, but you had made it through the fire. The tests of time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live for happily ever after's. Even though its not, eh, realistic -- it's a guilty pleasure.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any requests, find me on Tumblr at @susiephalange, or [@phalangewrites](https://phalangewrites.tumblr.com/request_conditions) ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ✿


End file.
